Two Greater Manchester boroughs are set to be handed £36m to pump into health and social care services.

Council and health chiefs in Stockport and Salford are the first in the region to benefit from a £450m pot of cash to improve and dovetail services.

The money - from NHS England - was handed to the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership as part of the region’s historic £6bn devolution deal.

Stockport will get £19m and Salford £17m respectively over three years. Residents across the region will eventually benefit from the cash.

They plan to care for people closer to home and the cash will be used to give patients better access to GPs, pharmacies and community care; improve mental health services; and reduce the length of time patients needlessly spend in hospitals.

Stockport Town Hall

Integrated Care Organisations (ICOs) will be set up across the region to bring services together.

In Salford - where an ICO has already been set up - the cash will be used to provide more effective co-ordination of care, help make early interventions in identifying patients’ health and social care needs, and reduce the number of avoidable hospital admissions.

The money will also be used to keep GP practices open for longer whilst funding more community-based care and wellbeing projects across the city.

The city’s ICO saw 2,000 members of staff from across the health and social care system brought together into one organisation, with bosses boasting a combined budget of £213m.

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The organisation also handles mental health services, home visits and care homes.

A plan to pool NHS and council budgets and streamline services in Stockport is also gathering pace, with bosses ironing out the final details.

The £19m share of the cash will go towards getting the borough’s ICO off the ground.

Manchester has been awarded a small amount of cash to support the ongoing development of plans to merge hospital trusts.

Manchester’s Central and Wythenshawe hospital trusts could be merged as soon as next April.

Salford town hall

The city’s health chiefs want to bring Central Manchester - which runs the Manchester Royal Infirmary and the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital - and University Hospitals South Manchester Trust (UHSM), which runs Wythenshawe, into one organisation in eight months’ time.

North Manchester General Hospital could be added by October 2018.

A single NHS trust could run all three Manchester hospitals in just over two years.

The region’s remaining boroughs are expected to apply for a share of the £450m later this year.